No Loss for Words

With news of the ongoing crash in the stock market, thoughts about other issues seem trivial by comparison.  It is like trying to plan for after Armageddon.  Despite the economic news, the sun is still shining outside and people are still going about their lives.  All over the world, people face life’s uncertainties every day.  I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that anyone else has problems as bad as mine, but that’s just my opinion.

With a presidential election a couple weeks out, there is some likelihood that the pendulum will swing back to the left again.  Obama looks like he has the election in the bag.  There are a lot of people fed up with the job Bush has done with the country and I am one of them.  In spite of the fact that Bush dropped the ball, I still believe that McCain would lead us better than Obama.  I’ve been wrong before.

We spent a lot of years with Democratic control of the Congress and the White House.  If you thought they did a good job then, this might not be too bad.  I voted for the first time in 1968 when Richard Nixon won the Presidency.  The congress had been under the continuous control of the Democrats since 1952 and up until the revolt of 1994 they had their way.  Then the Republicans broke the strangle-hold when they won the majority and held it for fourteen years.

At the time of the hand off to the R’s after the 1994 elections, I remember asking rhetorically whether the R’s had learned anything about being better stewards of the government from being in the minority for so long.  It didn’t take too long to see that their first order of business was “payback”.  Such a disappointment!

In looking back over the past forty years, I think the government worked best when each party had control of either the Presidency or the Congress.  Each party holds the other in check.  Things go south when the same party has control over everything.  The Republicans have been as irresponsible as the Democrats ever were.  We’ll see whether the D’s have learned any lessons.

I remember listening to Political Commentator, Carl Jeffers on his radio show one Sunday in 2006 prior to the mid-term elections.  He is a left winger and both the Congress and the President were Republican at the time.  He was saying the same thing.  He was obviously stumping for Democrats when he said that he didn’t think the government worked too well when one party was in control of both the Congress and the Presidency and voters should elect Democrats to take back the majority in the House of Representatives to balance the power.  I thought at the time old Carl might be saying something he might want to retract later.

Now after two years of a slim majority in the Senate and a more substantial majority in the House, the D’s are on the verge of a sweep.  What does old Carl say now?  Well, just this morning he was enthusiastically stumping for Democrats and Obama.  I guess he really meant that he didn’t like Republicans to have control of the Congress and the Presidency.

Partisanship is running our country off the road and into the ditch.  I am not suggesting that one party is better or worse than the other.  I think both parties are more concerned about staying in power than solving our problems.

After this election, I don’t expect much to change for a while.  As much as Obama would like to raise our taxes, he might have his hands full dealing with the recession.

I don’t blame the voters for the backlash; a bad experience tends to turn folks to a different direction.  I only hope that the different direction we are turning to will deliver the positive difference America is hoping for.